


You Told Yourself a Better Story

by Bodhicitta



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Depiction of major character death - sort of, Sherlolly - Freeform, eventual Sherlolly, mollock
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-03-15
Updated: 2017-04-25
Packaged: 2018-10-05 09:16:57
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 6
Words: 2,484
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10303274
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Bodhicitta/pseuds/Bodhicitta
Summary: In "The Final Probem," Eurus tells Sherlock that in order to deal with pain and loss, he 'told himself a better story.'Sherlock has become all too good at this.And which story is The Truth?***Each chapter stands alone.  A different room in The Palace.  Perhaps they will eventually all weave together, connect. Perhaps not.  I'm not sure what woudl be better for Sherlock's well-being - if the disparate stories did connect...or if they did not.





	1. For the Love of a Dog

He loved Redbeard.  Really loved him.  And so, the loss of him was too great to bear. 

So he told himself a better story.

His whole life was that better story.

Up to - and including - his battle with Eurus.  The puzzle box prison with its escape rooms. 

He so loved his dog that he'd rather believe that instead of his beloved Irish Setter, it was a childhood friend who had died.

There was no sister.  There was no Mycroft.

As for the others, he couldn't be sure.

It was elaborate, to be sure, the story.  The drug habit.  The crime solving.  The master criminal.  The sweet pathologist, so easily manipulated.  The courageous and loyal army doctor.  The seductress with a penchant for pain.

A sister locked in a madhouse.

A brother who ran the British government.

It took all this to forget.  It took a really circumlocutious tale to arrive at this more satisfying ending.  

No, Redbeard had not died.  It was his friend.  A human friend.  A little red-haired boy.

So many preposterous twists and turns.

But his love for his dog was unfathomably deep, like the waters of a bottomless well.

 

 


	2. When Molly Fell

No.

He stared down at Molly Hooper.  She was on the ground.  Where she should not be.  Where she should never be.

And something broke.  It actually hurt, the pain in his brain.  Perhaps it was a stroke.  

Suddenly John and Mycroft were behind him.  They didn't understand he needed to fly now, he needed to fall, because she was down there waiting for him, and they had it planned.  They would both get up, dust themselves off, run away, hand in hand.  The homeless network would do the rest.

 John looked over the edge and screamed, "Oh, God, no.  Molly?  Molly!"

A sharp knife blade piercing from the back of his head through to his eye.  He couldn't see.  His vision went white, and he buried the heel of his hand in his left eye.

From then on, he insisted that is was he who had taken The Fall.

Even at her funeral, he told the story of how they had planned it together.  People were shaking their heads.  Idiots.  It was a good plan and it had gone off without a hitch.

John gently led him away by the arm.


	3. In Therapy

"I'm sorry," Molly said, turning to the therapist, "but this is what I'm talking about."  Molly nodded her head toward the tall, dark-haired man, who, rather than remaining seated and actively partaking in the therapeutic process, was sniffing at the corners of a picture frame on the far wall.  

"His sense of irreality is no longer...attractive."

"Was it ever?" asked the therapist.

"Hm?"

"Attractive?  This disconnect.  Did you ever find it attractive?"

Molly looked down and smiled nostalgically.  "I did, once."

"We'll explore that another time."

Molly opened her mouth to protest.

"In a session by yourself."

Molly nodded silently.

"So why are you here _today_?"

"Sherlock refuses to admit we are divorced."

Sherlock paused his attempt to jimmy open the therapist's file cabinet.

"Of course we're not divorced.  Because that would mean you don't love me anymore.  And that...that's not..." He grunted with his efforts to force the cabinet open. "...possible."

Giving up on the cabinet, he walked over to Molly and stood directly in front of her.  

"The only other possibility is that we were never married.  And while that seems unlikely given that we are living together and that we have rings on our respective fourth fingers and I found three of your brassieres hanging in my bathroom, when the impossible is eliminated, whatever remains, no matter how improbable, must be the truth.  We were never married.  Somehow, through some as yet undetected poison or mind-control ray," he said, whipping his head around to hunt for the hidden brain-penetrating device, "you've managed to get this ring on my finger and bedeck my bathroom with your lingerie."

"Sherlock..."  Molly touched his hand tenderly.  "Just because were divorced doesn't mean I don't love you.  I do love you. I will love you for the rest of my life."

Sherlock snorted.  "Of course you will," he spat out sardonically, and he began pacing the length of the small room, his praying mantis legs bumping into tables, the desk, bookshelves.

Molly held out her hands as if to calm an over-excited child.  "Careful, Sherlock, you'll have bruises tomorrow."

The therapist turned around to find Sherlock behind her, reading her notes over her shoulder. "Sherlock?" she asked, craning her neck around to see him. "Do you fear that Molly does not love you?"

"Oh," he began, screwing up his face in a twisted smug smile, "Molly Hooper has been in love with me for years.  It's kind of sad, really.  Doesn't she see that she's not my type?"

Sherlock launched into one of his deductions, this one particularly cruel, culminating in an attack on her hair style.  

"You color your hair brown to hide your red highlights.  I ask you - who ever heard of a woman coloring her hair to make it more non-descript?"

Molly looked down, twisted her mouth into a tight grimace.

"How does this make you feel, Molly?" the therapist prodded.

Molly shook her head.  "Sad.  For him. It doesn't hurt me, the things he says.  It hurts me that he is so....out of touch."

"Sherlock, Sherlock?  Mr.  Holmes? I want you to sit down now."

"I'd rather stand."

"I think you'd better sit."

Sherlock complied, grudgingly.  

The therapist leaned forward, interlacing her fingers compassionately.  "What would it mean for your life if Molly did not love you anymore?"

Sherlock blinked rapidly, and then his expression froze.  His gazed fixed on a blank spot on the opposite wall.

After five minutes, the therapist whispered, "At what point do we...I mean, how long can we...I mean - he - how long can he go on like that?"

Molly heaved a huge sigh. "Hours."

The therapist scratched some notes on a piece of paper and handed her client a prescription.


	4. Eurus' Dream

Perhaps...perhaps there was no Sherlock Holmes. Perhaps there was no Mycroft Holmes. Perhaps there was only Eurus, a lonely woman, who worked a lonely job, and at night she went home and fell deep into her headspace. Unaided by liquor, drugs, but perhaps assisted by some trance-like music, or chanting of Tibetan monks.

And Eurus was not her name; rather, she was summoned by an ordinary name, bestowed upon her by ordinary people. Her name was something rather more ordinary.  Mary, or Molly, or Sally.  

Ordinary, ordinary.  

And in the ordinary hours between home and work, she walked through her imagined streets of London, following her brother The Detective, fending off madmen, encountering all manner of women, women so sharp and angular their edges would slice brick, and a woman who was soft and yielding, with large brown eyes. Both women trafficked in death, yet the contrast between them could not be greater.

And sometimes she would look over the shoulder of the Older One, and imagine he had built a fortress, just for her....

This was their story.  The doctor who never came home from the war.  His mercenary wife.  A cast of characters so motley it defied plausibility.  But what did that matter - it was her story, and it kept her entertained.

The sun would rise; she would shower, dress, go to work.

But in the wee small hours, she had brothers.  They ran the world.  


	5. A Slap in the Face

"Or perhaps, Sherlock, The Story began to change after the phone call.  Perhaps you didn't get the answer you expected.  Remember that day?"

"It's not a day a enjoy I dwelling on.  I'm not much for rumination."

"You?  You're not much for rumination?  You spend half your life inside your own head!"

"I don't have room for that day within my thoughts."

"Yes, you do.  Think back."

***

 **Sherlock:** _Molly, please, without asking why, just say these words._

 **Molly:** _What words?_

 **Sherlock:** _I love you…_

 **Molly:** _…I can’t say that, I can’t I can’t say that to you…_

 **Sherlock:** _…Why?_

 **Molly:** _You know why._

 **Sherlock:** _No, I don't know why._

 **Molly:** _Yes, you do, Sherlock._

 **Sherlock:** _No, I don't._

 **Molly:** _You say it. Go on. You say it first._

 **Sherlock:** _What?_

 **Molly:** _Say it. Say it like you mean it…_

After he said the words, Molly looked at her cell phone with a blank expression.

 **Sherlock:** _Molly?  Molly, please._

 **Molly:** _I can't say it._

 **Sherlock:** _Why?_

 **Molly:** _Because I don't._

"And then the tears welled up in your eyes as a thousand emotions flooded your brain.  Remember, Sherlock?"

 **Sherlock:** _You don't...what...you...Moll...._

 **Molly:** _I. Don't._

She jabbed her finger at the screen, ending the call.  

The clock ticked down to 0.00.

And that zero was like the zero at the bottom of the world.  Even the air was frozen.

John and Sherlock yelled, "No!" and reached out their hands as if to stop the explosion, to hold her flesh together lest it rend apart.  Mycroft's hand's flew up to his face to shield his eyes from the horror of the impending carnage.

Molly leaned against the counter, tilted her head, furrowed her brow.  And then resumed making her tea.

Sherlock froze.  He was locked in that moment in time.  Time had become space, and this moment was a room, shaped like a dungeon, shaped like a woman, her slight hands holding his heart like a cup of tea.  Oh, her hands were icy and they hurt him.  He could hardly breathe.

And then time unfroze.  The stars moved; the detective was aware of two other men in the room, breathing.  Sherlock let out a huge gasp and shuddered in relief.  And fury.  He almost collapsed on the pine box, his hands barely holding up his weight.

Mycroft heaved a great sigh and muttered, "There is no bomb."

John Watson wheeled around, yelled up at the ceiling, "It's just a game, a fucking game to you?"

Eurus just laughed.  "Well, even I could not have predicted that!"

Sherlock stared up at the screen.  "Predicted what?  That your bombs would fail to ignite?"

"No bombs.  No, no, no, Sherlock...."

"What was the point of that, Eurus?"

"Oh, I should think it should be quite obvious."

Mycroft dropped his head, realizing something.

"What was her answer, Sherlock?" Eurus asked.

Sherlock was silent.

"What can you deduce from her answer, Brother Mine?"

Sherlock gulped angrily.

"What can you deduce from that, Brother Mine?"  Colder this time.  Impatient.

Suddenly the light switched the deep purple, and a loud groaning sound was heard, as if a huge metal door was opening.

"The game is Deductions, Sherlock."  Eurus' voice dripped with a derision.  "What can you deduce from the fact that rather than melting at your tender admission of true love, she hung up on you?"

Sherlock stretched out his neck in haughty indignation.  The corners of his mouth turned down.

"Answer me," came the sing-song demand from Sherlock's wraith-like tormentor.

"Don't play this game, Sherlock," John warned.

Mycroft's head sunk even further into his hands.  "I suggest we don't antagonize her further.  I think you'd better answer her."

"Thank you, Mycroft.  Answer me," Eurus whined.

John turned away from the screen dismissively.  He faced Sherlock as his commanding officer.  "Soldiers, Sherlock.  Name, rank, serial number."

Sherlock stood up a bit straighter, facing John, who had ever kept him right.

"I am Sherlock Holmes," he said hesitatingly.  John nodded in encouragement.  Sherlock blinked and then added, "I reside at 221B Baker Street..."

"Answer me....." Eurus trailed off into a demented tune.  More than anything, her singing is what drove him to the brink.

"Answer me, Oh, Brother Mine, before the break of dawn, or sweet and lovely Molly dear will, oh fuck it, _I'll just kill her!"_

Sherlock spun around to look at the monitor.  Molly was on the phone with someone else. Smiling.  Giggling.  Her face lit up like the sun.

"Because she doesn't love me!"

His words echoed, ricocheted up the walls of the well, exploded out of the deep dark place into which they had been plunged. 


	6. John

He had always wanted to be a writer.  To sit in Parisian cafes, a cigarette dangling from his lips, scribbling in a notebook before running off to meet his bohemian friends - writers, painters, poets, dancers, sculptors.

And to retire at night to a tiny, cold garret, a silly, irremediably alcoholic girlfriend waiting for him, writhing on the bed in her tattered, soiled lingerie.  Hair askew, makeup smeared, luscious pink skin too much exposed.

She cradled his head in his lap and called him 'genius.'

But he was none of this.  

He was a doctor.

In between patients, he dove into his beloved world, his internal world, a whole world woven from whole cloth out of his imagination.  A world haunted, enlivened, set spinning by his incomparable creation, his Baby, his Darling.  

Sherlock Holmes.

"You mean to say, I am a fictional creation?"  Sherlock strode up to John, who was seated in a cafe, a glass of absinthe by his left hand.

John closed his notebook and looked up at Sherlock mirthfully.  "Call it what you will.  You do whatever I tell you to do, when I want you to do it."

"But I killed people...I was responsible for the death of your wife."

"Correct."

"I flirted with you, and Molly, and everyone."

"Shamelessly.  Mercilessly." 

John flipped through his notebook.  "'I appreciate the interest, but relationships are not my area.'  But you winked at me incessantly, constantly got into my personal space, handcuffed yourself to me."

"But, I don't understand - if this is a fictional world, and you are the writer, what am I?"

John fixed him with a quizzical gaze - a smirk played about his lips.  He opened his notebook, and flipped at random to one well-worn leaf.

"You are wresting a gun from an American superspy and smashing him in the face with the butt."

John flipped another page and read, half to himself, half to Sherlock.  "You are playing the violin."

As Sherlock's face fell, John thumbed through the notebook.  He paused, cleared his throat, and affected a great upwelling of emotion, like a hammy Shakespearean actor.

"You are falling, no..." John pulled a pen from behind his ear and scribbled something over a line of text.  He tapped the pen on the corner of his mouth and continued - "...diving....you are...diving...off a roof."

Sherlock gulped.  John's face broke into a demonic grin. "You are gulping."

Sherlock dropped his head. " Stop.  Just stop, now."

"Oh, this is a good one.  You are smashing a coffin to bits."

Sherlock grasped his head as if to stuff the sanity back in.  He was plunged into darkness, and while he could see nothing, a Nothing that stretched out forever, John's voice was everywhere.

_You are just winning._

_You are just losing._


End file.
